as if the media were canals or roads or highways; 
he talks about it in very practical literal way, and 
that once we get used to using these media, our 
tools shape us and that then leads to different 
habits of thought, and I think that’s happening. An 
understanding of McLuhan helps me to understand 
why our politics are what they are, why our 
entertainments are what they are, why our literary 
forms are not the way they were 20 or 30 years 
ago—people now tend to write much shorter 
length and, once you have photography and once 
you have television, you don’t need Dickens to 
explain to you what the lower depths of London 
look like, so it shifts our means of expression as